Can we Believe in Anthony Gose’s On Base Skills?

The Blue Jays are in the midst of their best most magical season since 1993, and although the team on the field right now looks good, in just a year from now, it could be a whole different story. Colby Rasmus, the Blue Jays current centre fielder, will be a free agent after the season, and with every passing day it looks as if he will not be back in Toronto come April 2015. It isn’t because of salary restrictions or because he’s been so wildly inconsistent since being traded to the Blue Jays over 4 years ago, it’s because Anthony Gose has looked like the player Blue Jays fans were expecting to show up in 2012, when Gose was named the 39th best prospect in the game by Baseball America. Gose, who turned only 24 years old two days ago, isn’t hitting the cover off the ball, as his 82 wRC+ (which denotes that Anthony is producing offence at a rate 18% worse than the league average batter), but he is getting on base, and with his skillset, that is just fine.

On Sunday, for the first time in his major league career, Gose reached the 200 plate appearance plateau in a major league season. Of those 200 plate appearances, Gose has walked in 10.5% of them, or 21 times this season. Is this just a product of small sample size, or has Gose actually changed his approach at the plate? Well, it isn’t a small sample, as BB% actually stabilizes after just 120 plate appearances, so it must be that Gose has changed something at the plate that has led to him seeing better pitches, taking more walks, and as a byproduct of that, getting on base more. This is great because with Gose’s speed, nobody should care whether he puts up a .450 SLG, but rather, all that is important is that he reaches base. Because, when he reaches base, he can easily take another bag or two with his legs. His value in this game will come from defense and baserunning, and if he can continue to get on base, his offense won’t be so terrible as to make him unplayable.

In 2014, the average centre fielder has been getting on base at a .325 mark, while Gose has been reaching .337 percent of the time as you can see from the above table. So, how has Gose refined his approach? Well, look at the following zone charts in GIF form from brooksbaseball.net.

The first image you are seeing is Gose’s swing chart from 2013. As you can probably see, it’s there’s a lot of red, which means he’s swinging at a lot of balls in the strike zone (64.1%). There are also multiple zones outside of the strike zone that are red. Swinging at balls outside of the zone, you guessed it, is bad. According to FanGraphs, Gose swung at 34.3% of the pitches he saw outside of the strike zone in 2013.

The second image you are seeing is the same chart, but from this year. Gose’s swing percentage at pitches in the zone remains largely consistent at 63.7%, and the colour of the tiles inside the strike zone reflect that, remaining red. The big difference lies around the strike zone, where Gose has cut down his swing rate by almost 9% to 25.7%.To give you an image of where that is relative to league average, since 2011, the league average has not dropped below 30.6%. Gose, in 2014, has been incredible at seeing pitches outside of the strike zone, and deciding to lay off of them.

By not swinging at bad pitches, Gose is able to take more balls, which leads to not only more walks, but in time, will also mean better contact on the balls he does swing at. So far only one of those things have happened, the walks, and Gose has been more than adequate enough at the plate that I would feel comfortable making him the left side of a centre field platoon next season to replace Colby Rasmus. Gose has been worth 1.3 wins in just 200 PA’s this year, and that is with little work from the bat, power wise (his .058 ISO is the lowest of his major and minor league career). If given a full workload, there is no question in my mind, that with his new approach at the plate, Gose can be at least a 3 win player, and if he does ever get some power, 4 or 5 wins is not unattainable.

Can we believe in the way Anthony Gose is getting on base this season? Sure. His walk rate matches what he was putting up as a prospect coming up through the minors, and he’s actually been striking out at one of the lowest rates of his professional career. So go ahead. Believe. Anthony Gose has become, with his skillset, more than playable. If he continues this, Alex Anthopolous will be able to sleep easy if/when Colby Rasmus signs with a different team in a few months, and instead of worrying about replacing Colby, he’ll be able to focus on re-signing Melky Cabrera, a player the Blue Jays do not have a replacement for…yet.

I agree completely. Better yet package Rasus with some of the other players and a couple of good AAA pitchers and trade them to Colorado for Tulowitzki!

rikersbeard

I’m assuming that last part is a joke because it makes no sense otherwise.

RedSoxFan

theres a guy named jose reyes on your team

Whirling Darvish

Seeing as Rasmus is a free agent at the end of the year…. do you suggest they sign him a long tern, deal and then trade him? Otherwise he may warrant a bag of balls as a return for 1 month and change. Plus the decent AAA pitchers (other than Romero) were apparently off limits for premium deadline trades so they went for the Valencias and Reimolds of the world

Mark

The walk rate has certainly improved, but his K% is very troubling. Here’s a guy who isn’t hitting for much, if any power, and he’s striking out 23.9% of the time. His pitch recognition is improving, but he’ll be a significantly below average hitter until he begins making more consistent contact.

I normally wouldn’t complain about a 20-25% K rate, but when you’re barely able to post a .100 ISO you better not be striking out in a quarter of your at bats.

The problem with using WAR here is his defence is rated so highly due to the SSS. See that UZR/150 of 31.1 in CF? That’s outrageous, and his UZR at CF is 6.2 in less than 500 innings (320 innings, actually). If you think he’s a GG CF, his true talent level is 10, and if you want to stretch it, then 15 runs for fielding. And that’s saying you think he’s basically Peter Bourjos or Mike Trout good in CF. So to expect him to be a 3-4 WAR guy based on his current fielding isn’t realistic, because then you need to cut his UZR down by more than half. Not to mention he’s on pace for 25 runs in RF if he played 150 games. Yes, UZR/150 isn’t realistic, but the point is his defence simply isn’t *this* good.

In other words, if you consider him a GG, 10 UZR per season defender in CF, then over 500 innings you’d think he’d be at 3 UZR at this point. He’s on pace to have 10 in 500 innings.

I haven’t done the math, but I assume if you gave him a season’s worth of AB with an 85-90 wRC+ and +10 UZR he’d be closer to 2-2.5 UZR and not 3-4 WAR. Leonys Martin is an 83 wRC+ and is on pace for around 6.2 UZR and he’s 1.7 WAR. That’s far more realistic of what to expect then 3-4 WAR.

To describe the Jays’ season as “magical” shows just how little magic this franchise has provided in the last 20-plus years.

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Blue Jays analysis from every angle. We mix the statistical, the mechanical and the visual to bring you facts, figures, and a little bit of fun. The name may say plus, but we're striving for solid-average.